Surviving Today

Chapter Nine

Day 657

It felt good to release all the pain of my past. It felt good to talk about what had happened to my family.

I hadn't realized how badly I needed to say the things I said to Jack, but now I am so glad I did so.

After we ate some breakfast we were traveling back to base. Jack was a few steps ahead of me, and he wore this wide-set grin on his face.

"Why are you so happy?" I ask the smiling fool in front of me.

He turns back around and quickly drops his smile, but it just as quickly returns.

"I honestly do not know. I'm just...happy hanging out with you. It's so boring at base...with Dad." He answers, becoming grim at the last detail.

I nod. "Let's play a game." I offer.

Jack turns around with a confused expression.

"What?"

I grin at him. "You heard me, let's play a game." I repeat.

He looks taken aback. "Um, okay. What kind of game do you want to play?" he says.

I look around and nod at my surroundings. About seven corpses litter the streets.

"There's a garage key on one of these corpses. Find it." I say.

Jack purses his lips in disappointment. "Oh. One of those games..." he trails off.

I roll my eyes. "Find the key and I promise you we'll find a real game to play." I say.

Jack nods. "Alright. Wait is it on one of the walking corpses or the dead ones?"

I grin devilishly. "Have fun." I say.

Jack shoots me a glare before he takes out the bat underneath his arm.

He strides over to the first corpse that's closest. It's a fat man with a beard. His skin is rotten and peeling, and blood has caked itself in his facial hair.

The creature whines and grunts at Jack as he stumbles towards him. Jack looks back at me obviously unamused, but as the corpse comes closer Jack pushes him away with the end of his bat.

"This isn't going to be pretty Amy, I think you should look away." he warns.

Jack keeps the end of his bat to the man's chest keeping him at bay.

I roll my eyes at him. "Your kidding right? You swear as if I haven't seen this kind of stuff everyday."

"No, I just think I should preserve a lady like yourself from this kind of impending brutality." Jack snidely comments.

"Well thanks." I say as I take out my gun, and shoot the man Jack is holding back with the one shot. "But your wasting your time."

The shot I just fired has alarmed all the other zombies on the street, and possibly more around, to come in our direction.

With that I give Jack a playful look.

"There. Is the game more your speed now? Get started before they herd." I say.

Jack lets out a groan. "You didn't have to do that." he says.

"Oh but I did. Your taking far too long." I reply.

By then Jack charges for the next nearest corpse and swings. It wasn't a good hit, in fact it just makes the zombie uglier as it tries to sink it's teeth into him.

Jack steps back a few feet and swings again causing the zombies head to become concave, and his eyes to pop out.

Since the zombie is so old his eyes have a soup-like consistency. They begin to drip from his skull with blood, and the milky liquid of his eyes.